


If You Wanna Leave Better Build a Rocket

by mytimehaspassed



Series: Dance On Our Graves Verse [1]
Category: Band of Brothers, The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:51:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet in Louisiana as children, with Roe a few years older and wearing it like a second skin, with Snafu going by Merriell because he was young enough to still be proud of a family name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Wanna Leave Better Build a Rocket

**IF YOU WANNA LEAVE BETTER BUILD A ROCKET**  
BAND OF BROTHERS/THE PACIFIC  
Roe/Snafu; (pre) Babe/Roe  
 **WARNINGS** : Modern era AU; spoilers for the series; mentions of war  
 **NOTES** : If I were writing this in order, it would go:  
I. this  
II. [We Were Two Until We Melted Down](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24574.html)  
III. [We Dance On Our Graves With Our Bodies Below](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24041.html)

They meet in Louisiana as children, with Roe a few years older and wearing it like a second skin, with Snafu going by Merriell because he was young enough to still be proud of a family name. Their grandmothers knew each other through some kin somewhere between St. Martin Parish and New Orleans, and they both had a couple of distant cousins in Kentucky, and Snafu’s father knew Roe’s own by name and by face and by the sound of his voice crooning through the bayou when Roe’s father used to take Roe fishing on the little boat he had named after his mother.

This was before Roe’s father had gotten himself shot in a dime store robbery. This was before Snafu’s father had taken to drinking and Snafu’s mother had put dinner in the oven one evening, climbed up the stairs to her bedroom, packed her bags, and left.

This was before Roe had told Snafu in the sanctity of his bedroom in Roe’s grandmother’s house that he had joined the Army and Snafu had said nothing before he pulled his arm back and punched Roe in the mouth, splitting Roe’s bottom lip. This was also before Snafu had gripped Roe’s face so tight Roe had thought that maybe he would break or something inside of him would break or maybe something inside of Snafu would break, because Snafu’s nails were digging into Roe’s face and his eyes were wide and uncertain, and nobody had said anything yet, and Snafu didn’t open his mouth until he placed it on Roe’s. They both pressed so hard that their teeth clashed together, making awful, hurtful sounds.

They both tasted blood.

Snafu had pulled back and looked at Roe like maybe he would make a joke, but the air between them was heavy and electric and not altogether pleasant, and Roe had looked like maybe he wasn’t sure about anything anymore, and Snafu had looked like maybe he would throw up, and neither of them moved for two long minutes.

And Snafu didn’t apologize because he never apologized, so Roe did it for him. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice drawn out in the small bedroom, his voice hoarse and pained.

And Snafu had said, “Thank you,” and pressed himself close to Roe again.

And Roe had let him.

***

(Roe’s mother had died from some kind of cancer that nobody could pronounce when Roe was only a baby, which was maybe why Roe had decided to go to med school, or maybe why Roe had decided to join the Army, but either way, he was fighting something that didn’t have body and would never have a body, and he was fighting it in the only way that he knew how.

The only person he had ever told about this was Snafu, and even then Snafu had shook his head and called him a dumbass in that slow drawl of his, and Roe had smiled and felt tiny and inconsequential, which is something Snafu has always managed to make him feel, and they had laughed about it afterwards, after the kiss and after Snafu had smeared Roe’s blood across both of their faces and after Snafu had almost but not quite begged Roe not to leave him. Snafu didn’t cry, but maybe he had wanted to, and Roe had wanted to tell him that he would be back, but maybe he never made promises that he couldn’t keep.)

***

The Army trains Roe in medicine in exchange for the grit and sweat and dirt of the desert, and Roe learns and shoots and lifts and kills, and he feels his way out of skin and muscle and bone, and he dreams in blood. He sends Snafu emails as often as he can, sends his grandmother paper letters with nothing but oil smudges and weather reports, and nobody asks him if he shoots to kill and nobody asks him if he hurts more than he helps, even if that’s the only thing that he can remember when he closes his eyes at night. Even if that’s the truth.

He meets boys who are from cities he’s never heard of and he trusts them with his life, and they do the same, still and solid under his hands as he works, his fingers slick with blood.

Before he left for his first tour, his grandmother had taken his hands in hers and prayed over them in guttural French. To keep them safe, she had told him, her accented English and the way she slurred her words. To keep them healthy, she had said, kissing each knuckle before kissing each palm. To keep them in practice, she had said, and Roe had turned away.

***

He spends his libo in one of the major hospitals in New Orleans, spends it haunting the bowed hallways of one of the clinics in St. Martin Parish, taking double shifts and working overtime just to watch the doctors work on diseases he’s never seen up close, just to watch the nurses treat drunken frat boys in town for Mardi Gras with broken hands and broken jaws. He crashes at Snafu’s when Snafu’s father isn’t home, slipping into Snafu’s bed with ease, even if they never do anything more than kiss and touch and talk in the dark space between the sheets, even if they’ve never gotten farther than Snafu and his mouth on the corner of Roe’s mouth, Snafu and his hand sliding smooth underneath the elastic of Roe’s underwear.

Roe had always told Snafu that it was because he was too young, because he was too enamored, because Roe didn’t want Snafu to think that this was it for them, that this was what they should become, because it was just the two of them, because this was enough. Roe had always told Snafu that this wasn’t what Snafu should be, that neither of them should be this, this contentment that comes with settling for something that’s safe and easy and imperfect.

Roe had always told Snafu that it was because neither of them were ready for this to go any further than it already had, had told him when Snafu was pliant and soft against him in the darkened corner of Snafu’s bed, pressed thin and up against the white walls, and Snafu had looked at him like maybe something inside of him had broken, like maybe it was his heart.

That was the sixth time that Snafu had hit him, but it was the first time that Roe had hit back.

***

(They take turns needing and wanting and calling, and Roe loses count of how many times Snafu leaves long, rambling messages on his voicemail, his words slurred between sips of whiskey from a bottle that he had stolen from his father, half English and half bastardized French, words Roe learned from his grandmother and from his father and from Snafu’s mother before she left, when she used to sit them both down in the kitchen with homemade dough and let them roll it out for hours, singing the old folk songs her own grandmamma had taught her as a girl.

Roe works twelve hour shifts and comes home to Snafu’s dirty boot prints on his bed sheets, the smell of cigarette smoke on his pillow, and maybe he doesn’t want to, but he makes the drive to New Orleans anyway, and Snafu looks at him like it’s a surprise, leading him by the hand to his bedroom, past Snafu’s father passed out on the living room sofa, the TV clicking with rapid gunfire from one of those old black and white war movies. Maybe Roe doesn’t want to, but he goes anyway, and Snafu presses against him tight enough to suffocate, settling against him on the bed, his legs and arms and fingers and mouth suctioned against Roe’s skin.

Maybe Roe doesn’t want to, but he lets him anyway, and Snafu’s fine with pretending.)

***

Just before the start of his second tour, he meets a boy in the hospital named Babe.

He doesn’t tell Snafu about him because he would never be able to form the words, in English or in French or in any other language that he doesn’t know, and he slips in through Snafu’s window that night and forgets about every rule that he’s ever made for them both, and he lets Snafu touch him for longer than he should. Snafu undresses him and undresses himself with the same medical ease that Roe has been taught in school, and when Roe doesn’t say anything, when Roe doesn’t move, Snafu kisses him lightly on the mouth, and says, “Gene?” And his voice is full of hope.

Roe kisses him back, and never tells him to stop.

***

(It isn’t the last time because Snafu makes him promise that it isn’t the last time.

It isn’t the last time because Roe never breaks his promises.)


End file.
